James Hogg, “The Ettrick Shepherd” (1770–1835), is remembered today as the author of that strange and unsettling novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. To his contemporaries, though, he was probably better known for his poems and for his stories – especially his supernatural tales, which often drew upon the folk-beliefs of the Scottish countryside.

The three stories in this volume – “Mary Burnet”, “The Brownie of the Black Haggs”, and “Strange Letter of a Lunatic” – fall into this category. In each, Hogg demonstrates his mastery of the craft of storytelling, and his understanding of the quirks, possibilities, and dark undercurrents of human psychology.